The well-known political milestones on which democratic systems are based have disappeared. Surprisingly, the candidates of the two until recently ruling parties of modern France, the Socialists and (under various names) the Golists, have been reduced to a negligible level, with their presidential candidates garnering less than 10% of the vote. However, the former president of France was a socialist, François Hollande, and the Golist François Fillon would probably have beaten Macron in 2017 if he had not been trapped in a corruption scandal. Now these political pillars of the Fifth Republic system, parties that provided substantial popular representation, are almost completely disintegrated. These elections could be the coup of their grace.
France is now faced solely with alternatives that repel or worry a large part of its people: Emmanuel Macron and Marin Le Pen. Even in the last election, Macron was the first choice of only a quarter of the electorate. At that time he seemed an undisputed centrist. It is now regarded with visceral dislike by a remarkable range of people. Le Pen represents a far-right tradition that until recently most voters considered beyond the pale: reactionary, racist and anti-democratic. But it has grown in popularity, especially among young people.
Whoever becomes the next president will face a dissatisfied and alienated country, and it is not clear how effective a government can be. A president Le Pen would mean street violence and political and economic crisis. Would he be able to form a credible government? Many of those who vote for her are so unhappy that they are willing to risk tearing down the house. But if re-elected, Macron could also face popular uprising and a slim majority in parliament to back him.
The plight of France is an extreme form of the political disease that prevails throughout the democratic world: rejection of conventional politics, reduced faith in parties and members, low turnout, unpredictable and unstable voting choices. This has given politicians who oppose “mainstream politics” – or claim it was – an opportunity in many countries.
Conventionally they are rejected as “populists”. Lepen is of course one of them. So is her far-left counterpart, Jean-Luc Mélenchon. But Macron himself was the archaeologist, campaigning in 2017 against conventional politics, rejecting existing parties and creating his own movement from civil society and non-politicians. This respectable bourgeois populism has the label: “techno-populism”. He claims legitimacy from the supreme ability to manage the system, in the case of Macron as the aspiring leader of a stronger technocratic EU. His victory sounded like the death of the old party system.
It matters; Yes, if nothing can replace it that can perform the minimal functions of democratic parties: to gather majorities, or at least large cohesive minorities, to elect (and get rid of) political leaders, to formulate programs, and to try to carry them out if elected, to give people a means of participation and representation and to maintain a sense of legitimacy. No system does this perfectly. Indeed, looking around the world we can see how badly many democracies work, including the most established ones. But in a system stuck between Macron and Le Pen, the problem is acute.
Does history explain this? Definitely yes. Political systems are always created in times of crisis and it is very difficult to change them later. The current French constitution of 1958, which its author aptly called a “democratic monarchy”, was adopted to enable Charles de Gaulle to dominate the initial civil war in Algeria and to form a strong and even authoritarian government by the Fifth Republic. .
This was the last variant of the tactical fluctuations between power and democracy that France had experienced since the revolution of 1789. The most recent was the super-reactionary Vichy regime of General Petten (1940-44), followed by the super-parliamentary system of the Fourth Republic (1946- 58), which was criticized as powerless and chaotic. De Gaulle’s system was reasonably called Bonapartist, which is an attempt to combine power and democracy – “active power, passive democracy”, as one historian has defined it.
The Fifth Republic is paradoxical. It was the most widely accepted and arguably the most successful of the 15 constitutional systems that France had since 1789. However, it was always criticized in the first place and regularly created problems. A cynic could say that France’s problem is the authorities. Unlike Britain – which, according to Disraeli, was not governed by authorities but by parliament – the French regularly choose or are forced to try to design perfect systems. This, thought Edmund Burke, was the original sin of the Revolution, the “fairy of philosophy.” De Gaulle’s democracy deliberately weakened political parties and parliament by consolidating power in the presidency.
After 64 years he did very well. Parties are largely associations of individual supporters, based on patronage and personal ties. Le Pen’s party, now called Rassemblement National, is a 50-year-old family business. Macron started his own from scratch – La République en Marche (now just EM! With an exclamation mark). But then de Gaulle, the godfather of the system, had his own day party.
The primary goal of the party is to install a president, who is practically irrevocable, and whose powers of government and patronage are enormous. As one skeptical commentator, Jean-François Revel, wrote a few years ago, this was such an open instrument of abuse that it was “criminal to put it even in the hands of a saint.” It was “totalitarianism”, but “effective totalitarianism”. Indeed, Macron’s high-profile plans for sweeping reform had to be weakened or rejected after the Yellow Yellows uprising and the workers’ strike. But Macron remained. And it is likely to remain for another term. What should I do?
The last two parties will be Macron’s EM! and Lepen’s RN. Their changing and abbreviated titles show how little they exist other than their leaders. The great mass parties that once dominated French political life have almost disappeared. However, he had not only huge organizations, but whole cultures: there was a “peuple de gauche” with its own sociability, rituals and even tastes (the Left, a survey showed, preferred Camembert).
But it is the far right that is still alive and kicking. It also has its historical cultural core: a mixture of traditional Catholic patriotism, once royal. of French nationalism, which resists Macron’s ostentatious Europeanism. and suspicion of immigrants. This attracted many former communists, and now many young voters, embittered by the poor job prospects and a system that seemed indifferent.
It is this tradition of the Right – long embodied by Jean-Marie Le Pen that has been tainted by anti-Semitism, anti-republicanism, Algérie Française nostalgia and a prolonged relationship with Petainism – that has made Le Pen an ineligible father and daughter. Most French citizens, whether Socialists or Golists, would by no means vote “thin”.
This political enigma – a hardline tradition that kept leprosy upside down, but at the same time made it ineligible – can unfold as the historical weight of the 1940s and 1950s is lifted by new generations. I still believe that the weight of the story means that Le Pen will be defeated even by Macron. But no more landslides.
Then there is likely to be some kind of political turmoil that could lead to new alliances and perhaps more ephemeral parties. But the desire expressed by generations of French politicians since the early 19th century that France could develop a stable system of respectable moderate parties such as the American and British parties that could offer credible alternatives seems less likely than ever, mainly because Anglo-Saxon model is now uninspired.
Thus, whoever becomes the next President, most likely a remote and unpopular establishment, unable to unite the country, unable to carry out a program, but firmly trapped in the Palais des Champs-Elysees. Whether Macron or Le Pen, the dangerous instrument will not be in the hands of a saint.
Robert Tombs is an Emeritus Professor of French History at the University of Cambridge
